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{{trope}}
Examples of [[{{TOPLEVELPAGE}}]] in [[{{SUBPAGENAME}}]] include:
== ''[[Discworld]]'' ==
*
== ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'' ==
* Tywin Lannister
== Other works ==
* [[Evil Matriarch|Mama Elena]] from [[Like Water for Chocolate]]. She is constantly controlling to her youngest daughter, Tita, and forbids Tita to marry the man she loves so Tita can care for Elena when she's old just because it's tradition.
* [[Roald Dahl]]'s ''[[Matilda (novel)|Matilda]]'' has this and neglect; they call her names and deride her for not being like them (she prefers to read, they watch endless, brainless television). At one point, her father rips up one of her library books while calling it trash. Also, her parents leave her (a five year old) alone on afternoons when they are at work or bingo, which would endanger her if she weren't so intelligent. Her father is the worse of the two as he scams people out of their money, but her mother is a total slacker. But both of them the take a back seat to the horrifying [[Evil Teacher|Agatha Trunchbull]].
* ''[[Charlie and the Chocolate Factory]]'' has the parents of Augustus Gloop, Violet Bureaugarde, Veruca Salt, and Mike Teavee, who are responsible into turning the children into what they are...a glutton, a disgusting gum-chewer, a spoiled brat, and a couch potato respectively. It ends up backfiring on them...for example, Augustus Gloop falls into a chocolate river and is sucked into a pipe. He survives, but it's not a pleasant
* [[Darkness Visible|William Marsh's]] father is a brute, though how much of one is only gradually made [[Scars Are Forever|clear]]. Lewis is so shocked about it that the abuse is never, ever played for [[Dude, Not Funny|laughs]].
* In [[Tanith Lee]]'s ''The Silver Metal Lover'', Jane, the heroine, discovers that her mother {{spoiler|futzed with her phenotype to make Jane plainer than she should have been because she didn't want the competition}}. The reader sees all along how her mother passively-aggressively manipulates and undermines Jane at every opportunity. She also {{spoiler|arranges for the destruction of Jane's android sweetie}} because Jane was growing up: growing *away* from her.
▲* Tywin Lannister of [[George R. R. Martin]]'s ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]''. He treated his youngest son like crap for years, culminating in forcing him to watch -- and in the end, participate in -- the gang-rape of his new wife because she was a commoner.
▲** Samwell Tarly's father takes [[Why Couldn't You Be Different?]] to extreme levels, openly despising his son for his bookishness and lack of badassitude. After years of trying to make him shape up through means such as forcing him to constantly wear chainmail and slaughtering a bull and making him [[Blood Bath|bathe in its blood]], he fathered a second son who he liked more. So he threatened Sam with a "hunting accident" if he didn't join the Night's Watch, thus giving up his inheritance to his younger brother.
▲** Cersei Lannister has shades of this, too. She loves her children, but clearly favors Joffrey, the eldest and a [[Complete Monster]]. After {{spoiler|he dies and his kinder, gentler brother Tommen takes over the throne, Cersei constantly compares him to Joffrey, and uses him as a puppet so that she can act as queen. She goes as far as to ''force him to beat his whipping boy'' when Tommen refuses to obey her out of love for his new wife, whom Cersei hates. Tommen is ''8.''}}
* Jaqueline Wilson's ''Lola Rose'' has Jayni talk about how her dad beats up her mum whenever he gets angry or suspicious, and constantly threatens her, and how he inevitably hits Jayni hard at the start of the book for the first time. Jayni repeatedly talks about how scared she is of her dad, even when he's miles away.
** He treats her little brother Kenny 'okay', but his behaviour is slowly convincing him that it's okay to beat women, and it seems only a matter of time before either he starts hitting Kenny or Kenny starts hitting his mum and sister.
* Jess' father in ''[[Bridge to Terabithia]]'' [[The Movie]] was a borderline case. He was abjectly disrespectful of his son's creativity and constantly making sneering remarks about his son's kind heart and artistic ability. However, he'd started a [[Heel Face Turn]] by the end of the movie, brought on by {{spoiler|Leslie's death}}. Jess retained his kindness and creativity, though.
** Janice Avery from the same movie also had an abusive father. For her, it was a [[Freudian Excuse]], in that she was the school bully.
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*** Every single novel written by Katherine Paterson has at least one abusive parent. She claims that the reason is because it reflects her childhood.
** Whether his father's actions constitute abuse is questionable, since he only seems to act in that manner at times when his temper might get the better of him, such as when Jess neglects his chores on the farm in favor of his art (and at one point loses the keys to the greenhouse, which would be deducted from his father's salary to replace). The fact that they live close to the poverty line might make his desire for his son to do something that he would see as more practical understandable, if not justified.
▲** Coin, the [[Tyke Bomb]] from ''[[Discworld/Sourcery|Sourcery]]'' was psychically dominated by (what was effectively the ''ghost'' of) his father almost from birth, {{spoiler|leaving him with almost no personal identity after he was finally freed}}. May overlap with physical abuse, via [[Functional Magic]]; at one point, a bystander smells scorched flesh.
▲** ''[[Discworld/The Truth|The Truth]]'': William de Worde and his father are not, shall we say, on speaking terms.
* In ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', Denethor despises his more scholarly son Faramir, openly preferring the more war-geared Boromir. It's implied that that's one of the reasons Faramir doesn't try to wake up from a magical coma. This is [[Character Exaggeration|played up very strongly]] in the movie, but it's there in the books too; {{spoiler|Denethor ''does'' mourn Faramir when he's about to die, to the point of almost killing both of them in a murder-suicide, but he still says that he would've rather lost Faramir than Boromir}}.
* Fanny Price of ''[[Mansfield Park]]'' suffers from neglect when she's adopted by her Aunt and Uncle Bertram and cruel emotional abuse from her Aunt Norris.
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** In the book, it's unclear whether it was rape or just the twisted mind of [[The Fundamentalist|Carrie's]] [[Knight Templar Parent|mother]]. She and her husband were devoutly religious and she actually didn't know that she was pregnant; she referred to her growing stomach as "a cancer of the womanly parts". Carrie's grandmother was not like this at all; this suggests that Margaret has some severe mental health issues.
* In one of the most harrowing treatments of the subject in a children's book, Willie in ''Goodnight, Mister Tom'' is regularly beaten and starved by his religious maniac mother. {{spoiler|He is eventually found locked in a cupboard after a week's incarceration, cradling his dead baby sister}}.
▲* [[Terry Pratchett]] has used this a few times in ''[[Discworld]]''. Young Nobby Nobbs fears prison because his father's in there, and he used to break Nobby's arms. And while the Grey House isn't exactly parental abuse, it's still... icky.
▲** In the novel ''[[Discworld/Hogfather|Hogfather]]'', the criminal Catseye is famous in criminal underworld circles for being able to see in the dark. But as he admits he is actually scared of the dark and of old cellars, because when he was a boy his father regularly used to lock him up in their cellar without a light for hours as a punishment. He trained himself to see in the dark mainly as a way of compensation.
▲*** Most of the working-class, smalltime criminals in ''Hogfather'' turn out to have been abused, physically and/or emotionally, as children, although they're still sane... compared to the main villain, the psychotic, boyishly handsome assassin Mr. Jonathan Teatime, who is implied to have killed [[Self-Made Orphan|his own parents]] when he was still a child.
* This is [[The Reveal]] in ''[[The Thread That Binds the Bones]]''.
* In ''Sunny Ella'', a dark retelling of Cinderella, Ella's stepmother slaps her across the face twice the day they meet. Later she uses her cane as a weapon and at one point removes Ella's voicebox as punishment for talking back.
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* Sensei in the Japanese novel ''Kokoro'', albeit through his uncle. It's one of the reasons why he crossed the [[Despair Event Horizon]].
* ''[[Wild Cards]]'': The Amazing Bubbles was supposed to have had money from her modeling career put into trust for her until she was of legal age. But her parents instead funded their own decadent lifestyle. When she found out and sought legal help against her parents, they took the money and ran, leaving her with what they couldn't carry. And in a nasty parting shot, they also slashed open her beloved stuffed toys.
▲* ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'':
▲** In Harry's case, the Dursleys were physically, emotionally and mentally abusive to Harry. Forcing him to live in the little room under the stairs of their house, hiding the letters from Hogwarts, telling people that he was a delinquent, lying to him about his deceased parents, boarding up/making doggy doors for Harry's new bedroom...
▲** In Dudley's case, the Dursleys were an odd sort of mentally abusive because they raised Dudley to be a bully with an entitlement complex, and Petunia spoils him so much that he was morbidly obese up until ''Order of the Phoenix''. This is made more obvious in the last book, where Dudley finally thanks Harry for saving his life in the fifth book and wishes him luck. His parents are horrified.
▲** They also abuse Dudley psychologically through how they treat Harry, telling him what amounts to "If you don't live life by our rules, we'll treat you like this."
▲** Although at the end of the day, it was implied that Petunia, despite the abuse, did ''somewhat'' care for Harry Potter. Vernon, on the other hand, absolutely hated Harry, and was perfectly willing to throw Harry out of the house with the excuse of Harry allegedly cursing Dudley (when in fact it was actually a Dementor), to which the only reason why he didn't was due to Petunia's (And Dumbledore's anonymous Howler's) interference. He's also the only one who doesn't attempt to say goodbye.
▲** Severus Snape's [[Backstory]] indicates his father, Tobias, was physically and emotionally abusive. For extra points on the tragedy meter, Snape spends much of his adult life handing out the same kind of emotional abuse he received from others.
▲*** It's also implied that Severus's mother, Eileen, was neglectful, although whether it was because [[Wild Mass Guessing|she hated/didn't want/was indifferent towards him]] or because she was dealing with the effects of Tobias's abuse could be debated until the Earth falls into the sun.
▲** Voldemort's mother, Merope Gaunt, also definitely suffered some level of parental abuse. Some fans interpret it as going [[Parental Incest|even further]].
* In ''[[Cloud of Sparrows]]'', Emily was raped by her [[Wicked Stepmother|evil stepfather]], and her brothers were regularly whipped and beaten at the slightest pretext.
* Eve Dallas of the ''[[In Death]]'' series. Eve's mother was a prostitute who resented Eve's very ''existence''; her father beat, starved and raped her regularly, with plans to sell her to pedophiles, until she killed him at the tender age of ''eight''. Hers is a [[Line-of-Sight Name]], since her "parents" didn't see fit to give her one. This leads her to become a police officer, in order to never again be a victim.
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* In ''Don't You Dare Read This, Mrs Dunphrey,'' the sixteen-year-old protagonist suffers abuse from both her parents. her father, who left the family years earlier, was emotionally abusive and tried to pass it off as [["Just Joking" Justification|just kidding around]], and physically abusive--one of his last actions before running out on them was shoving his daughter so hard he knocked her out. The mother is neglectful, sitting around and being useless, letting her daughter parent her ten-year-old brother, and then finally just runs away from home without so much of a note, leaving her children to starve and freeze for a few weeks until the protagonist finally decides to tell someone what's happening.
* [[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn|Huckleberry Finn]]'s [[The Alcoholic|alcoholic]] dad beats him, verbally abuses him, takes his money to buy whiskey, leaves him to live on the streets, and at one point kidnaps him and keeps him hidden in the woods. In ''[[The Adventures of Tom Sawyer]]'' it's implied that he also abused Huck's [[Missing Mom|late mother]]--"They used to fight all the time."
* In [[Gene Stratton Porter]]'s ''
{{quote|''Does it seem to you that anyone would take a newborn baby and row over it, until it was bruised black, cut off its hand, and [[Door Step Baby|leave it out in a bitter night on the steps of a charity home, to the care of strangers]]? That's what somebody did to me.''}}
* In ''[[The 39 Clues]]'', this is most certainly the case with Ian and Natalie Kabra. {{spoiler|Their mother Isabel is a [[Complete Monster]] who verbally degrades them on a regular basis, and it's left unclear whether their father treats them similarly or whether he simply doesn't notice or care about what Isabel does. Ian and Natalie love and fear Isabel simultaneously, while believing that they lead the perfect lives because of their family's extensive wealth.}} They'd be [[The Woobie|Woobies]] if they weren't so nasty themselves!
** Then Isabel takes it [[Up to Eleven]] in the final book of the first series, ''Into the Gauntlet'', when she {{spoiler|[[Moral Event Horizon|shoots Natalie in the foot.]]}}
* The people who raised Felix and Mildmay in ''[[Doctrine of Labyrinths]]'', who as close to parental figures that the brothers had after they were [[Parental Abandonment|sold]] at the ages of four and three, respectively. Both of them were raised as kept thieves, with Felix going on to be taken in by a pimp and blood wizard.
* [[Sherlock Holmes]] prefers the city to the countryside because this is more easily revealed.
{{quote|''There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or
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